A first-time mom adjusting to her new everything

Tag Archives: concerns

…when I walked into Widget’s room this morning at 3am, after he woke me scrying (his scream/cry hybrid). He was lying there on his tummy, with his face mashed into the side of his crib. Not a good feeling.

He’s been rolling onto his side a lot the last few days, and apparently he’s figured out the last 90 degrees. I’m not sure if he can do it reliably yet or not, but still. Add to this that he never seems to want to roll from his tummy to his back (I’ve seen him do it, he just doesn’t do it often). Rather, when he’s done with tummy time, he buries his face into the floor and cries.

So the order of business, after I took care of his immediate needs and he was back in bed:

Purchase a new baby monitor with video. Stupid, perhaps, but it keeps me from having anxiety through the roof. Pay extra for 1-day shipping.

Google that shit. Attempt to discern if advice found is relevant, given the assumption the baby is 6 months old instead of 3

Decide advice from Google is B.S. even though some comes from people with credentials

Call pediatrician at 8:00:01 am (they open at 8). Leave a message with the triage nurse.

I suppose I should feel lucky that I get so many pictures from ultrasounds, since I’m now on number 5, for my dog to eat after they’re left on the counter. But the flip-side is that they were all for issues. I don’t know if women who say they wish they had more ultrasounds have thought this through. More ultrasounds means they think there’s something wrong, or potentially wrong, and they want to keep an eye on it. I don’t know many people who would take problems in exchange for more pictures, if they had the choice.

But I had my second in-depth ultrasound Friday to check on the fetal cyst. Aside from receiving the jaw-dropping bill for the last one (clocking in at just under $675 AFTER insurance), it was a good experience all around. The cyst is much smaller (by half!), and I don’t need to go in any longer for monitoring. It’s such a relief; they will do an ultrasound after baby is born to check and see how it’s doing then, but it’s so “small as to be insignificant” at this point.

Bonus good news: baby is large for my due date, so it is now a bit sooner than before. This means I get to be done sooner! And leave work sooner, since that’s getting difficult to get up at 6:00 to go to everyday…

I had my ultrasound appointment at the high-risk practice earlier this week. They confirmed there is a cyst there, and they believe it’s on the spleen. I go back in 4 weeks to see if it grew, shrank, or stayed the same. At this point, the doctor tells me it’s small and doesn’t concern her because it’s below the diaphragm and there is excellent blood flow to all the surrounding organs, with fetal weight in the 43rd percentile. All that is good, but I still have one overwhelming feeling.

I’ve failed my one job before this baby is born, and that is to gestate a healthy fetus.
Is that unreasonable? Probably. Have I done my best? Yes. Does that make me feel any better? No, not at all.

And yesterday, I find out that my husband has told his family about this, right before we’re due to go visit and before I was ready to say anything to our families. It’s easy to be anonymous, and not have to face the people you’ve told; it’s not easy when I’ll have 3 days of them in front of me, wondering what is the problem/solution/how I am. I suppose it’s nice to have people that care enough to be concerned, but I don’t feel like discussing this with anyone, or accepting sympathies. And honestly? I’m mad at the person my husband told, because THAT person is the one who went and told everyone else. It wasn’t that person’s news to tell, and I feel my parental boundaries being stepped over. It’s a shame my husband doesn’t feel that way.

Do you ever feel like once you have a grasp on everything happening in your life, there’s always something new added, just to keep you off-balance? I do, and it’s been happening more and more often. I find this disturbing, probably because I struggle with wanting to control everything so my equilibrium doesn’t get thrown off. Weird and counter-intuitive, I know.

But I was doing pretty well, handling all the pregnancy-related symptoms and stresses, until last Friday. I was scheduled to have an ultrasound to see if my placenta was still low-lying. I also took the one-hour glucose test while I was there. The placenta had moved, so everything there is good.

Nothing is ever that easy.

On the ultrasound, the technician noticed there was something. She and the doctor weren’t sure what, but they had a guess. They ended up referring me to a high-risk practice for another ultrasound to confirm what they think. The guess right now is that there is a fetal splenic cyst. Being a librarian, the first thing I did was look through medical literature I have access to and see what has been published about the topic. 2 articles, total. I’m guessing that makes it rare.

Now I’ve got nothing to do, but sit by my phone and wait for the referral office to call me to schedule the ultrasound. My OB’s office said it would likely take place this week, so I’ve been nothing but anxious waiting for the call. I want to get it scheduled and figure out what the problem is, and how we address it. I’d also like to know so I can square everything away at work, but honestly? I’ll take the first appointment they can get me.

I had my 18 week ultrasound yesterday, and some of this 3-d/4-d imaging is some freaky stuff. I can’t understand why anyone would actively seek it out, but hey, to each their own. We did get a silver lining out of the whole thing, and that is an ultrasound image that makes baby look like a pterodactyl. That is what I call a keepsake.

Everything else checked out fine, which was a bit of a relief. I’m sure no one wants to hear that there are markers for spina bifida or any defects, and since we opted out of screening, this was when we were going to get any bad news. Fortunately, my only issue is getting another medically necessary ultrasound at 28 weeks because of a “low-lying placenta.” Apparently baby likes using it as a pillow (that’s according to the ultrasound tech, who saw it being used exactly that way and me making inferences because I can).

We also went ahead and found out what we’re having – maybe this makes me terrible, but I was so relieved when the gender was the one I was hoping for. Long story short, there are some health issues in my immediate family that seem to affect one gender more than the others, and knowing that I don’t have to worry about it for my child is a weight off my shoulders. I know people will say it doesn’t matter what you get as long as they’re healthy, but while that would be true for a boy or girl until middle age, once they hit that and you know there’s all this crap they might have to deal with, I’m pretty sure you’d hope for the opposite as well.